A startup called Skip says they've absorbed "The UX and industrial design learnings of the consumer tech space about what makes an easy-to-use, good-looking product that helps drive meaningful behavior change." The MO/GO product they've come up with as a result, is pretty unusual: Powered pants, essentially consumer-friendly exoskeletal legs that make it easier to climb and descend stairs or hills.

The company calls their offering "movewear," and says it "Boosts your legs by up to 40% on the way up," "Gently supports your knees on the way down" and "Makes you feel up to 30 pounds lighter as you move."

Here's a teaser of what the pants look (and sound) like in action:

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This could obviously be a gamechanger for those with declining mobility, or for those recovering from injury.

Skip says they will sell the MO/GO pants for $5,000, and that they're setting up rental locations in the western U.S. and Canada, where you can pay $80 to try the pants for eight hours.

There is one caveat I'd like to point out about the mobility assistance products we will start to see come onto the market. I spent years studying and practicing internal Chinese martial arts, and one of the beliefs impressed upon me is that the entire body must work together; in particular, ICMA practitioners reject the idea of isolating muscle groups in workouts. We thus train in whole-body exercises that strengthen the muscles, tendons and ligaments together. Western exercise techniques often seem to focus on the muscles exclusively, though the tendons and ligaments ought be given equal attention.

All of that is to say, if you are wearing a device that provides muscular strength that you don't have, I believe it's possible that your tendons and ligaments may be subjected to forces they're not equipped to handle. So I do think we may start to see a rash of injuries as power-boosting devices proliferate.

That's just my opinion, I have no medical background. But I do think objects like that shown here would ideally be used to help those with compromised mobility, rather than turning the perfectly mobile into superpeople for recreational purposes.